First, I am not a shill for the author, the publisher or the series. I happened to come across the blog for the book when I logged into Blogger one day. I went to the blog associated with the book, which led me to Amazon.com.

From there I checked out the book, examined the contents page, and decided to purchase the book.

I received the book a few days ago and, as promised in another comment section, I am proffering my opinion about the book because, as a man rather unskilled in confusers and Blogger in particular, others had asked about the book and whether or not it contains valuable information.

I’ll cut to the chase:

Should you purchase the book? Yes, if you’re not really familiar with Blogger and find it difficult to interpret their help areas and, more importantly, find their help areas woefully inadequate, this book is for you. I’m still reading it (at 270 pages, I’m around half through) but, though not finished, I give the book very high marks.

Once I finish the book, I hope to garner the time to attack my blog and make some updates and/or more completely understand how Blogger functions.

Some bloggers have sites that are feasts for the eyes. They’ve broken down their side links and blogrolls exquisitely and enhanced their sites with wonderful graphics, moving gifs, photo links, surveys, hit monitors and the like.

Of course, in my opinion, it’s all about the writing. But it doesn’t hurt that, in addition, one’s blog is well organized, pleasing to the eye and customized to your wants and needs.

Also, there is a website concomitant with the book, maintained by author Julie Meloni, entitled Blogger In A Snap. Please remember: the book, though entitled BLOGGING In a Snap, is specifically about Blogger and no other blog provider.

Once I start to apply the various ideas and concepts I’ve gleaned from the book, I’ll provide another review regarding the ease of application.

KING KONG: The New Movie

I saw the new King Kong today. Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings trilogy) directed this second remake (1976’s King Kong starred Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange, Charles Grodin) of the classic 1933 black and white thriller, starring Fay Wray. On the heels of Rings’ success, Jackson is gold and could, essentially, have made a movie about banana slugs and found it funded.

First: be prepared. This movie is 3 hours and 14 minutes long. I timed it. Better hit the bathroom and squeeze every little bit of pee from your bladder prior to finding a seat.

Was it another Lord of the Rings? No. Out of 5 stars, I’d give it 3.5.

It was just too long. Peter: learn to listen to your editors. But the Brontosaurus stampede scene was absolutely riveting and marvelous — what viewpoints, digital melding and drama!

A very good movie, not an exceptional movie, but there was just — I don’t know — something missing. So much of it was digitally contrived. Yes, it yielded some Eye Candy scenes. But the digital thing just lacks — for want of a better word — humanity.

If you’d been reading actual newspapers today instead of acquiring your news from blogs or the internet, you’d have thought the new movie “Brokeback Mountain” was the center from which the sun, moon and stars revolved.

Okay, so Iraq is holding elections in its country and ours as well. That clearly should be secondary to a movie featuring homo cowboys grabbing dicks in the hay.

You know what? I’m sorry, but here’s where I simply draw the line. Maybe 6 to 7% of our nation is homosexual — male and female. That’s nice for you. Congratulations. You have jobs. You pay taxes. You arrange flowers. Some males have prominent lisps. Some dykes wear flannel, guts overlapping your blue jeans, crop cuts, mullets and biker wallets. Fine. Become carpetmunchers. Or sodomists. But I simply don’t want to see that s!!t on the big screen. Give me a label. I’m a racist (because a certain percentile of homosexuals are ____, _____, or _____.). I’m a homophobe because I don’t actively promote the homosexual lifestyle or endorse mens’ penises penetrating other mens’ sphincters.

Okay, I’m all that and more. BABAGOI.

But I’m STILL NOT spending any money to see your stupid Ang Lee movie.

Hello? Did you copy that? MONEY.

Oh yeah. You’re motivated by money. Let’s just see how well this stupid perversion of the standard western does when it gets thrown into the mix in most Century Theatres, Regal Theatres, or any of the other national chains. Outside of Bunghole City, San Francisco.

Oh gosh, that would be judgmental, wouldn’t it?

Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch:

Everything we’ve said would come to fruition has: Iraq has held free elections. From the Associated Press news:

Iraqis voted Thursday in one of the largest and freest elections in the Arab world, with strong turnout reported in Sunni areas and even a shortage of ballots in some precincts. Several explosions rocked Baghdad throughout the day, but the level of violence was low.

The heavy participation in the parliamentary voting by the Sunnis, who had shunned balloting last January, bolstered U.S. hopes of calming the insurgency enough to begin withdrawing its troops next year.

Hello? Dems and DEMs: Are You Listening?

No, you’re not. Nancy Pelosi isn’t listening. John Murtha, that incontinent wonk, isn’t listening. Howard Dean isn’t listening. John Kerry isn’t listening. Teddy Kennedy doesn’t have the capacity to listen unless it involves an aged bourbon. Barbara Boxer isn’t listening. Hillary Clinton is listening a little but missing the mark (because she’s too Centrist — can you imagine?), Joe Biden isn’t listening. Harry Reid is barely above Stegosaurus level — you know, his brain makes his front limbs work and another ganglion of nerves barely make his back legs function.

We’re setting world records in Iraq.

And at home the media is writing about a movie involving cornholing cowboys.

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Welcome to America.

I’ve been tagged, not once, but twice by both:

• Robosquirrel (People Covered In Fish)
• Gayle (My Republican Blog)

Both excellent blogs, I should immediately like to point out, so click on the links and visit them!

In any event, as it was explained to me, I must now write in some detail about 5 odd/strange/unknown habits or aspects about me and then tag 5 others. Well, in my limited blogworld, the 5 others I’d like tag in kind have themselves already been tagged; I think I’ll leave that portion unfulfilled (clearly going to BlogHell, I think).

So, heavy sigh, here goes:

1. I am very anal about organization, cleanliness and, in particular, my house. This has caused some, eh, shall we say, irregularities in some relationships. I have had a very strange job over the years, located in a number of places, which can be alternately peaceful or ridiculously stressful. I have historically had little if any control over what occurs at work and there have certainly been peaks and valleys.

My home is my cave. I like to go home and, following a particularly bad day or week, pull the rock over my hole and escape within. When my home makes sense, when things are in order, when there is one aspect of my life over which I have control and into which I can flee, then my “outside” or work world can go to Hell — as it frequently does. As long as one portion of my life is rational and controllable, I can deal with Life and the trials it distributes.

2. I am a Railroad Buff. I “chase trains.” I do not build model railroads or play with toy trains. I like the real thing. I live in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Fornicalia off Interstate 80 at the 4,000 foot level, right at the snow belt. Not more than 500 feet away are the main #1 and #2 tracks forged and laid by those who built the Central Pacific Railroad. This roadbed still rests on the original CP line hewed by literally thousands of Chinese workers with nothing more than picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, black powder, horses, oxen, blood and sweat.

The photograph above is that of me in the engineer’s seat of a Burlington Northern Santa Fe SD40-2 locomotive, waiting for the east CTC signal at Switch 9 at Emigrant Gap — kindly taken by the engineer himself who requests to remain nameless.

I have been in the cab of numerous Union Pacific and Southern Pacific locomotives — pretty much a no-no for cab crew. Even worse, I have been given cab rides on another number of occasions by kindly cab crews — an absolute trip when you watch an engineer at work handling a 6,000-foot, 10,000-ton train up and down the mountain. There are engineers and conductors I know by name who wave at me from their cabs — knowing that I’ll be using digital photo or digital video equipment and recording their passing. I have roughly 2,000 + 35mm and digital photographs of trains, some published, one used for the cover of a train video in VHS. I also have over 50 hours of mini-DV video from a Sony VX-2000.

This is how weird I’ve gotten: I can immediately tell the difference between a GE or EMD locomotive by its sound; I can differentiate between the airhorns of Amtrak locomotives and freight locomotives; I can tell, unseen, if a train is going uphill or downhill from some distance by listening for a locomotive set in dynamic braking.

As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing finer than anticipating a train, watching a set of armor yellow Union Pacific locomotives approach and listening to the thoaty diesel roar of a triple set of 4,000 HP engines passing, their traction motors howling, watching the sanders at work and smelling the heady diesel fumes pouring from the hot stack of each unit. Boys and girls, now that’s livin’!

3. I used to be in radio a number of years ago, both in news and music. I once worked for a large 50,000 watt AM radio station where Rush Limbaugh cut his teeth. I’ve performed every job in radio, from on-air talent to ops director to news editor, programmer, production room control, promotions director to program director to station manager. As a result I am well schooled in music and have a vinyl record collection exceeding 4,000 classic, valuable and irreplaceable disks. I have a CD collection exceeding 2,000. I am a treasure trove of late 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s rock, jazz, soundtracks and electronica.

4. I cribbed the name for my blog, Bloviating Zeppelin, from Hugh Hewitt’s description of the loveable, cuddly Teddy Kennedy. At the time it was quite appropos as I weighed 320+ pounds. In the past year I’ve gone from 320 (ahem — kinda around there) to 235. I’ve gone from a size 52 waist to — ta-daa! — a size 42 waist last week. I did it all on Atkins and 24 Hour Fitness. I feel better than I have in 15 years. I still Bloviate but I am not quite the Zeppelin I used to be.

5. I was once a registered Democrat. In college I had hair past my shoulders and a red beard that would make Dusty Hill blush.

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This is where the tag ends because, essentially, everyone else I would have tagged has already been subject to same.

And that’s the name’a that tune. . .

Sorry, I just couldn’t wait for the weekend to make the award. On the way to work this morning at 3:15 AM (PST), I tuned into the news and caught a very brief quip about Iran and it’s President. After that, I knew what my morning post must be.

The first Dangerous Moonbat Award goes to:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

These are perilous times. And this Moonbat proves it conclusively, making Iran a very hazardous threat to Western states and cultures — clearly, focused on Israel.

Ahmadinejad has made three remarkably ignorant, uneducated and ridiculous statements:

— On December 8th, he said the Holocaust was, essentially, a myth:

“Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that they condemn that person and throw them in jail.”

“Although we don’t accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, our question for the Europeans is: is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem?” he said.

“If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe — like in Germany, Austria or other countries — to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe. You offer part of Europe and we will support it.”

— On December 7th, he also said:

“They have fabricated a legend under the name ‘Massacre of the Jews’, and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves,” he told a crowd in the southeastern city of Zahedan on Wednesday.

— Finally, on October 26th as reported by Aljazeera.net:

“As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map,” said Ahmadinejad, referring to Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayat Allah Khomeini.

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Is there any wonder Israel has said they’re considering bombing missions to Iran in March to eradicate nuclear enrichment sites?

And the award goes to:

Europe.

Murder and killing and not the same thing. Most of us in the United States recognize this; clearly those of Europe do not.

“The execution of convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams sparked outrage Tuesday throughout Europe, which has a deep aversion to capital punishment.”

The disappointment was particularly strong in Austria, native country of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, where many had hoped the former bodybuilder and film star would spare the 51-year-old Williams.

Leaders of Austria’s opposition Green Party even called for Schwarzenegger to be stripped of his Austrian citizenship _ a demand rejected by Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel as “absurd” despite his government’s opposition to the death penalty.

Capital punishment is illegal throughout the European Union, and the issue was amplified in Williams’ case due to the remorse supporters believe the Crips gang co-founder showed by writing children’s books about the dangers of gangs and violence.

Volker Beck, a leading member of the opposition Greens party in Germany, expressed disappointment at the execution. “Schwarzenegger’s decision is a cowardly decision,” he told the Netzeitung online newspaper.

In Graz, Schwarzenegger’s hometown, local Greens said they would file a petition to remove the California governor’s name from the city’s Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium. A Christian political group suggested it be renamed for Williams.

In Italy, Franco Danieli, vice president of the Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, criticized executions as an act of “dehumanization.”

“The execution of Tookie Williams is even more intolerable exactly because he had managed to transform the negative into the positive, violence into nonviolence,” Danieli said.

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For Those of You Who Believe the Death Penalty Is Racist:

From the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice statistics:

In 2004: 59 persons in 12 States were executed — 23 in Texas; 7 in Ohio; 6 in Oklahoma; 5 in Virginia; 4 each in North Carolina and South Carolina, 2 each in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Nevada; and 1 each in Arkansas and Maryland.

Of persons executed in 2004:

36 were white–

19 were black–

3 were Hispanic (all white)–

1 Asian

Of persons under sentence of death in 2004:

1,851 were white —

1,390 were black —

28 were American Indian —

32 were Asian —

14 were of unknown race

Number of prisoners under sentence of death, 1968-2004:

Year White Black Other

1968 243 271 3

1986 1,013 762 25

1989 1,308 898 37

1994 1,653 1,203 49

2000 1,989 1,538 71

2004 1,851 1,390 74

Source: Capital Punishment 2004, November 2005, NCJ 211349

Race of Defendants Executed in US Since 1976:

BLACK 339 34%
HISPANIC 63 6%
WHITE 579 58%
OTHER 22 2.3%